Jamie Oliver's chickens come home to roost

Jamie Oliver, who urged shoppers to buy free-range and organic chicken, fails
to use either in his new lunch range for Boots.

Jamie Oliver made a television programme a few years ago in which he exposed the “horrors” of factory farms and urged shoppers to boycott intensively reared chicken..

“I am a free-range and organic boy,” the chef boasted to viewers of Jamie’s Fowl Dinners. Clearly, however, he takes a different approach to his customers.

Mandrake can disclose that the meat used in Oliver’s new “deli-inspired” range of sandwiches and snacks for Boots, such as the chicken and basil focaccia, comes from farms allowed to rear birds in hangar-like barns, with no access to outdoor space. Up to 15 animals can be kept in each square metre.

“I was genuinely shocked,” says one of Oliver’s fans. “When I bought the sandwiches, I assumed they would be filled with organic and free-range ingredients, given Jamie’s record. When I discovered they didn’t, I asked for my money back.”

Jamie’s Fowl Dinners caused a row with Sainsbury’s, which Oliver is highly paid to advertise, after the supermarket chain refused to send a representative to a debate about intensive farming.